Shackled to the ivory tower

There is a guy sitting two tables over from me in the library. I know him because he sat at my table during first year orientation and encouraged me to join the Runner's Club at Willamette. He seemed like a nice enough guy. I was surprised to see him in my Civil Procedure class the following week when school started. He was a 2L, and while 2Ls are not entirely uncommon in 1L classes here because of the merciless retake policy for students who get below a C+ in their required first year courses, it was still a little jarring. That guy went on to take that very same Civil Procedure class again as a 3L. There are few things in this world as mind numbing and painful as civil procedure, but it is one of the few classes here that is not graded on the curve, which means no one HAS to fail it. People still manage to do so. And evidently people manage to miss the minimum grade requirements for graduation. He should have been long gone with the rest of his class following graduation last May, but I still see him. Everyday. On this very campus. Willamette has a pretty unforgiving "kick out policy" which basically means if you manage to fall into the very bottom of your class, they thank you for your tuition donation to that point, and kindly show you the door. This weeding out happens after each grading period, but in the case of graduating 3L students, if you slip into the netherworld between pass and fail (the 2.3 cumulative), you are required to come back for an extra semester to get your act together. For those poor souls trapped in 3.5L purgatory, all I can say is, perhaps law really isn't for you. But thanks for hanging in there, because you serve as a constant reminder to me that I can't check out entirely just yet.

Kids say the darndest...wait, what?

Yesterday was madness. Our ward had its primary program, and can I just say whoever thought it would be prudent to pack the stand with 100 fidgeting, giggling, whining, "I have to go to the bathroom"-ing children is beyond delusional. Scott and I both had to sit up with the kids and regulate. I spent the entire time trying to keep my coughing and shaking under control, while watching every agonizing minute pass on the clock in front of me. When it was over, my first instinct was to head for the door and keep on walking. I'm pretty sure that if you're already sick, it's not the best idea to spend three hours in the company of small children, who not only catch everything, but manage to mutate what they catch, so when they boomerang it back to you, the sickness is nastier and even more resistant to drugs and bed rest. But it was also Scott's first day as an official primary worker, and I knew I couldn't leave him alone with our class. That would just be too mean. So I sucked it up and went to primary. Our lesson was on sabbath day observance, and Scott was quizzing our brilliant 5-year-olds on what things we should and should not do on Sunday. There was a girl next to me, screaming in the corner, still traumatized by the fact that her mother had made her come to class (which literally required prying her off mom's leg and quickly blocking egress from the door). Despite my best efforts to calm her, she was still shrieking and making it hard to hear what was being said. I gathered that the standard primary answers were bouncing around the room. "Don't hit your sister." "Do what mom and dad ask." "Read scriptures." "Go to church." And then another little voice piped up from the front of the room, loud enough to be heard over the separation-anxiety poster child at my side. "Don't look at naked pictures!" Scott and I looked at each other as we tried our hardest not to die laughing, which effort, I might add, was unsuccessful. That caught even crying girl off guard, causing her to momentarily forget what she was protesting. I'm not sure what made the kid think that particular response was the one we were looking for, but since we couldn't argue with the veracity of his answer, he got a gummy bear for a correct response.

Dear Socrates, I am no longer impressed.

September 1, 2006 saw me taking my first wobbly steps into the law school abyss, living in fear of the sound of my name, and resigning myself to a very long three years of public humiliation on a regular basis. That was then...
The case is Leonard v. Pepsico, the class of course is contracts, and the mission that fate has so cruelly dropped in my lap is to defend a plaintiff so stupid, so completely unreasonable that no rational human being could possibly hope to win the case. "Ms. Wareham... Wareham is that it? It's pronounced 'ware-ham'?" Never before have I so hated the sound of my own name. I nod. "Tell us your thoughts on this case." I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and laid my head on the chopping block. I wouldn't be needing it anyway; it was defective!!! It seemed to have sprung a leak, because for the life of me, I could not call to memory what I had read, nor was I capable of making sense of my case notes. "Well...I would say that I have to agree with what has been said regarding the reasonable person standard. I don't see in this case how the plaintiff could have honestly thought the commercial was making an offer when it was so obviously meant to be a joke." The professor stares me down for a moment, the class is shrouded in silence. "You know what side you're defending, right?" Of course I do. How could I not? "Okay, did you want my personal opinion, or my opinion as member of the Leonard camp?" The response is swift and unforgiving. "Ms. Wareham, do you think a judge is going to care what your personal beliefs are when you're at trial? Of course they won't!" A low rumble of poorly suppressed laughter ripples through the room. "Now again, I ask what your take is on this case." Right. "Well the plaintiff saw the commercial as an offer, to which he responded with an acceptance in the form of his completed order request and the money for the jet." Silence. The professor turns to the other side of the room, demanding a rebuttal to my assertion. Am I off the hook? Response is offered, and again he turns to me. "And what do you say to that?" "The commercial makes absolutely no distinction between the items you can purchase with product points and those you cannot. If the intent was merely a joke, which is evidenced by the fact that the revised commercial indicated as much, the company should have explicitly stated as much." Did something so utterly stupid and contrary to what I actually think just escape my lips? I'm a lawyer already. The professor continues. "Then the dispute becomes one of fact. Would a reasonable person think this is an offer or not? If we in fact have a dispute, then summary judgment, which is granted in this case, is not appropriate. It should have gone to a jury. But why don't we want this case to go to a jury? Do you know what kinds of people sit on juries?" I hear my thoughts out loud. "People that aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty?" He smiles ever so slightly, raises an eyebrow, and accuses me of reading his notes. "Unemployed people that aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty." This time the laughter is not at my expense. And he moves on to his next victim.


And this is now. I sit in Federal Income Tax, wearing my boredom like a pair of mirrored sunglasses. The professor doesn't seem to see his reflection. He is awkwardly firing off names from his attendance sheet, trying to get a Socratic dialogue going. I am unfazed. I know that my classmates are equally disengaged because I can see their screens: solitaire, Facebook, Ebay, and email, but no notes. No one is taking notes. I'm pretty sure I haven't heard a word that has been said for at least the last three weeks, with the possible exception of when the professor shot down an anomalous attention-payer by telling the student his question was incoherent. It really is true what they say. The first year, law school scares you to death. Probably because all of us were used to being "the smart ones." And that first year is only successful if you finish with no self-esteem. The second year law school works you to death. Class, job, extracurriculars, seriously. It's a good thing we don't have any self-esteem left, because a mentally stable person would choose life. And the third year law school bores you to death. No self-esteem, no quality of life, and the new found distraction of job searching during class. Like the last three students who have been called on in this class, I think I'm going to need a pass. Why? Because I'm dead, three times over, and I'm clearly not paying attention.